Vehicle wheels are made to standards laid out by the Tire and Rim Association, Inc. One requirement of a conventional wheel, included in the standards, is a well whose purpose is to allow the tire's bead to be installed over the rim flanges. FIG. 1 is an outline of a cross-sectional profile of a J-section wheel rim conforming to the standards established by the Tire and Rim Association, Inc. A large well is clearly visible in the approximate center of the cross section. Such J-section wheel rims are the most commonly used rims in current automobiles.
Multi-piece wheels (typically a centre and an inner and outer rim that bolt together) have been used in racing and high performance street applications for many years. Their advantage over single piece wheels is that a multitude of rim widths and offsets can be assembled from a limited parts inventory. However, such wheels are conventionally completely assembled before the tire is mounted so they still need a well. The inclusion of a well in a wheel rim results in imposition of a limitation on space available for large brake systems or for suspension systems within the space beneath the rim and thereby also restricts the freedom of the engineer to implement design innovations for conventional or novel suspension systems Elimination of the wheel well in a rim is known in the art but is often used in combination with wheels having wire spokes or holes in the central body of the wheel. Such spokes or holes are typically incorporated in wheel design in order to reduce the weight of the wheel while still providing the strength necessary to withstand the various physical force vectors applied to the wheel during driving. Unfortunately, these same spokes and holes disturb the flow of air past the wheel when the vehicle is in motion causing aerodynamic inefficiencies. Elimination of such inefficiencies by eliminating wheel spokes while retaining space within the wheel for locating a suspension system without sacrificing wheel strength would be a desirable advance in the wheel structure art.